A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.

In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.

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POLITICO 44

"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

The letter's signatories range from GOProud's co-founder and Chairman Christopher Barron — a member of a group encouraging Dick Cheney to run for president — to Tea Party leaders with no particular interest in the gay rights movement.

As of Sunday evening, the letter had 17 signatories. They include tea party organizers, conservative activists and media personalities from across the country, including radio host Tammy Bruce, bloggers Bruce Carroll, Dan Blatt and Doug Welch, and various local coordinators for the Tea Party Patriots and other tea party groups.

"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.

King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.

"Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That's not something I necessarily believe in," said King. "I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that's not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots."

That indifference is essentially the point of the gay conservative group.

"For almost two years now, the tea party has been laser-focused on the size of government," said Barron, who said his group and the tea partiers are part of the "leave-me-alone coalition."

"No one has been talking about social issues - not even the socially conservative candidates who won tea party support," Barron said.

Social issues and fiscal issues are both very formidable and need to be tackled. But I would agree that first thing starting in January...that we focus on the fiscal issues...because if our economy goes in the toilet...nothing else will matter...because we will have to worry just to feed our children and find refuge for them!

But social issues such as abortion and other issues are extremely important and should not be 'shelved', but merely set aside until we can get on our feet!

I believe that this Congress will be a start in getting our 'house in order financially'! I believe that this Congress will be the one that will have the toughest job of all...to stop the spending and cutback on what we are doing!

However, it is still going to rest with each one of us...to sacrifice in 'our' world to get it done! We need to cut whole departments in Washington that are doing nothing but sucking money out of the till!

We need to raise the retirement age for SS...and not beginning in 2050....there will not be a government in 2012...if we let things continue as they are! We need to start today...grandfathering those already on SS in...but working on those coming into the process.

We need to get rid of this humongous Obamacare that is going to cripple us financially! We need to make changes in Medicare and Medicaid.

We need to continue to ask churches and all relgious organizations to continue their great work in helping the poor and needy...as they have done for so many years.

There is much to do...but we need to start with how we spend our money and why!

It can be done and it will be done...and our family is prepared to do what we can to save our Republic for the future of all of America's children...not just our own!

I find it so strange that Obama came in office on January 21 and the tea party was formed in February. If they were so hot about big goverment why didn't they protest when Bush cut taxes twice, started two wars, gave medicare the biggest drug cut in history and none of it was paid for. Your vains are showing.

I find it so strange that Obama came in office on January 21 and the tea party was formed in February. If they were so hot about big goverment why didn't they protest when Bush cut taxes twice, started two wars, gave medicare the biggest drug cut in history and none of it was paid for. Your vains are showing.

I find it so strange that Obama came in office on January 21 and the tea party was formed in February. If they were so hot about big goverment why didn't they protest when Bush cut taxes twice, started two wars, gave medicare the biggest drug cut in history and none of it was paid for. Your vains are showing.

So California's Sanctuary Cities engorge themselves on taxpayer’s money, thanks to the return of Sen. Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown. Los Angeles county and San Francisco is drowning in public entitlements being given away as freebies to millions of illegal aliens. Senator Barbara Boxer and ex speaker Nancy Pelosi are hard line liberal progressives, who ideology is you don't have to work for a living as government will pay your way. Senator Harry Reid who squeaked back to the Senate is another member of the Liberal extremist groups, who has sold his soul for large minority votes, promising the Dream Act--a sleight of hand, to pass a De-Facto Amnesty. The Dream Act will not only reward students of criminal aliens, who stole through our borders. But will also function as a sponsored pass for the whole families to arrive after the newly naturalized students use the "Chain Migration Act" to open the gates to their Immediate Relatives—the spouse, minor children, and parents of adult U.S. citizens.

Chain Migration refers to the unceasing and often-snowballing chains of foreign nationals who are allowed to immigrate as the law allows citizens and lawful permanent residents to bring in their extended, non-nuclear family members. This Chain Migration is the primary mechanism that has caused legal immigration in this country to quadruple from about 250,000 per year in the 1950s and 1960s to over one million a year since 1990. As such, it is one of the chief menaces in America's current record-breaking population boom and all the attendant sprawl, congestion, school overcrowding, dwindling energy supplies and other impacts that reduce American's quality of life. This type of immigration is very dangerous to our society as the US population is beginning to see the light, from the costs brought to them in higher taxes from catering to the illegal alien population by Liberal zealots.

The Lame Duck Dream Act would explode our population even more and as the Heritage Foundation has projected, at a cost of 2.6 Trillion dollars and millions more uneducated relatives. This certainly will put our Social Security at risk. Senator Reid, Barbara Boxer Diane Feinstein and the creeping fetid fringe groups of Liberal lawmakers are not concerned with the costs, but the amount of votes extended to them by grateful minority blocs in future election, the lobbyists secretive bribes and a need to exert their influence upon America. It’s beyond comprehension that Harry Reid would try for the passage of this Dream Act, when our schools are overcrowded with the children of illegal aliens, the massive cost to taxpayers and the terrible reality of the 15 million jobless rates in this nation. This will add even more red ink to our US deficit and certainly not riding the favorable wave of the Tea Party, to lower taxes and reduce a over encroaching federal government.

Any new incremental Amnesty--as that is what the Dream Act is, will just keep on attracting the forever poor and desperate across our borders. We must secure our border with an electrified fence, stop the drain on our social services by pregnant women who intentionally birth their children here, to take advantage of instant citizenship for the infant; so all family members can stay. Now is the time to release your anger on all members of Congress, by calling (202)224-3121 beginning this Monday? Learn the reality of illegal immigration at NumbersUSA and which politicians are corrupted at Judicial Watch.

When will the libertarian idiots learn that this country WILL NOT recover if we continue to mass-abort our future generations, if we allow divorce and homosexuality to continue to tear at the respect for the traditional family, if single parenthood and promiscuity are tolerated, and if we continue to treat a family like a burden, rather than a gift?

Gay Marriage and Abortion will not make the country collapse tomorrow - but you cannot possibly make the case that ANY society can survive unless men and women get together, stay together, give birth to, and raise, the next generation of American citizens. It can't happen.

The building blocks of our society - marriage, family, children - are the building blocks of any and every element of this country. We have to have them, and we have to promote them, and we can't do that if we lay down and let every person who wants to run all over our values.

Avoid social issues, I totally agree. The single biggest reason for republicans losing elections in suburbs is the stupid focus on "family values", etc. Shut up about abortion, homosexual marriage, and whatever else these religious people obsess over.

We are in big trouble, and we need to focus on the economy. Fire 10% of the federal workforce, and freeze the wages of those who remain. Try to have the public employee unions decertified and forbid government workers from joining any future unions.

And stop mass immigration. We don't need any more poor people. The ONLY kind of immigration we need or benefit from is the H1B, hig-tech type researchers, etc.

I find it so strange that Obama came in office on January 21 and the tea party was formed in February. If they were so hot about big goverment why didn't they protest when Bush cut taxes twice, started two wars, gave medicare the biggest drug cut in history and none of it was paid for. Your vains are showing.

The tea party didn't protest tax cuts because they want tax cuts!! Bush and the dem congress started two wars. BTW, Obama forgot that Bush gave the most aid to AIDS in Africa than any other president in history.

Avoid social issues, I totally agree. The single biggest reason for republicans losing elections in suburbs is the stupid focus on "family values", etc. Shut up about abortion, homosexual marriage, and whatever else these religious people obsess over.

And how long do you think a society of promiscuous, abortionist, homosexuals will last? Just a guess?

Some people are just plainly ignorant about American history. When there were still Thirteen Colonies and later, at the time of the Boston Tea Party, until the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, sodomy was considered shameful and sinful and certainly was not discussed in polite society. As for abortion, it too was considered for what it is: murder and destruction of innocent human life. Abortion was never anything but killing an unfortunate child. by women who got pregnant unintentionally. Only in the past three decades have there been calls and attempts, sometimes through Liberal activist judges, to make or find "rights" in what has been throughout American history long been considered immoral behavior, certainly nothing to be proud of. Thus the statement, "When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," is misleading and biased in favor of homosexuals and seems to reject the religious character of our people based on a proud history of acceptance of mainstream Judeo-Christian values and all the facts of our American history. The very word "gay" used to mean "happy" or "cheerful", until it was adopted by the modern gay liberation movement to refer to homosexuals and lesbians. For some years, we've had to endure a barrage of "politically-correct" media coverage of "gay" issues, and frankly it is overkill and an overdose of "gay". Many are frankly sickened by hearing it all the time on CNN, MSNBC, and even Politico. This is caused in part by internal and external pressures by individuals and groups whose primary purpose are to promote and advocate for "coming out" in the military, gay marriage, gay adoptions, etc.

When there were Thirteen Colonies and at the time of the Boston Tea Party, up until the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, sodomy was considered shameful and sinful and certainly was not discussed in polite society. As for abortion, it too was considered for what it is: murder and destruction of innocent human life.

No it wasn't. State laws prohibiting abortion didn't take affect until the mid 1800s.

I'm still waiting for one of these leftys to explain how we can have a strong, stable society if people are getting into traditional relationships, staying there, and having and raising children within those relationships...

It can't happen. you need all of those things for a strong society, and that means Republicans are entirely justified in promoting them and fighting anything and everything which detracts from them.

Social issues are a political loser and none of the government's business anyway. Abortion is murder, but the government cannot prevent it from happening. The best we can do is not to subsidize it. The Tea Party needs to stay far away from social issues.